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“Football Night in America” host Bob Costas says he wasn’t surprised to learn today’s “bigger, stronger and faster players than in previous generations” can suffer the same head trauma as boxers, but he was taken aback by some of the stats surrounding the ongoing concussion controversy and brain injury.

Bob Costas and Will Smith at a screening of “Concussion”Dave Allocca/Starpix

“It’s called tackle football, but at the NFL level and much of the college level, plays don’t end on tackles, they end on collisions,” he told us at a screening of the Will Smith film “Concussion.” “It’s a matter of physics when these high-speed collisions take place. It’s just not common sense to say that somebody’s not going to come out of that with their head a little messed up.”

And, “If you can get pugilistic dementia from being hit in the head as a boxer, it makes sense that even if you’re wearing a helmet, if you take hit after hit after hit, that at least some percentage of those who played [football] will suffer brain trauma . . . Maybe I was a bit surprised by the extent, and the percentages that are now put on it, and by some of the horror stories.”